Dream Waves

Errol Specter was a prolific Santa Cruz musician who released fourteen cassettes during the '80s under the name Dream Waves on his own Phantasma Sound label (plus a poetry album and three environmental recordings). His style was primarily progressive electronic, but he found his biggest success with a pair of ambient albums in the mid-'80s. In fact, though his music career was initially paid for through a lucrative leather goods business, his ambient period proved to be such a hit with his customers at art fair booths that he basically had two full time jobs for a few glorious, but stressful years. Specter was born in 1947 and began learning the clarinet at the age of ten, studying jazz and classical music. After getting out of the Navy in 1968, Specter began studying eastern philosophy and doing transcendental meditation in the San Diego area. He tuned into a local radio station and heard Morton Subotnick's Silver Apples of the Moon and immediately knew electronic music was his calling. At the time, however, he lacked the means to buy the expensive gear. It wasn't until 1975 when he moved to Santa Cruz and his leather goods business started taking off that he was finally able to start acquiring synths. He started with a Micromoog and soon added an Arp Odyssey and Arp 2600. Specter started recording a few years later, releasing a stream of instrumental cassettes inspired by Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. By 1984, he was experimenting with more ambient sounds starting with Universe and then on his best seller Radiance in 1985. At this time, Specter was selling his cassettes exclusively through his sporadic live shows or booths at art fairs. He tried to get signed to a bigger label or distributor but couldn't get anyone interested, which is surprising given that by Specter's estimation he had sold about 15,000 copies of Radiance alone. Without wider distribution, it meant that Specter was stuck at home doing the tape duplication himself, and when he wanted to do a vinyl run of his follow up Astral Currents (1986) he ended up over his head, losing $3,000 to a shady middleman who went out of business before pressing up the vinyl. In 1986, Specter began teaching Electronic Music at Cabrillo College where he remained until 1992. Around this time he also picked up a corporate gig doing audio recordings for UC prof. John Grinder's extremely popular Neuro Linguistic programming seminars. Meanwhile, Specter continued selling his cassettes through the mail. Inspired by Michael Stearns and other who were adding nature sounds to music, Specter released another version of Radiance called Radiance II with an ocean backdrop and was pleasantly surprised when it sold even better than the original, moving over 20,000 copies. The new age boom was beginning to slow down by this time, and Specter's remaining tapes never sold as well as Radiance or Radiance II. Specter tried to get into soundtrack work and had some success with smaller movies but never was able to make a career out of it. In 1995, he wrote a book called Fundamental Technologies of the Synthesizer. Specter continued to record and do leather work, although the pace of his musical output slowed greatly. His last album was released in 2007, but he's currently at work on a new one called Mists of Time. Specter and his wife Dharma live in Ben Lomond, CA., a small mountain town near Santa Cruz. -Ultra Vilage